true wheel tuesday! week 3: green power

so now what?

so you’ve assessed the trueness of your wheel, and you’ve discovered your strengths and your weaknesses, the areas where you are covered and the areas where you are bare, bald, ready to pop, flat! and you’ve set yourself some goals, spread out over time. and maybe you’ve even compared your goals to your wheel, just to see if there is a relationship. just to see if you are the sort that dives in first to shore up your weak spots, or if you are the type to build up even more in your areas of strength and ease.

very well. and now you say: what the hell am i supposed to do with this? yeah. well, good question! i like to see you thinking, gears whirring–that’s when you have the possibility of coming up with some good stuff…keep it up! and what i really want to look at today is the number one thing that you absolutely have to do to get the best results in the short term, to get the best results in the medium term, and to get the best results in the long term.

not that you can’t get good and even great results in the short term without it. not that you can’t get good and even almost great results in the medium term without it…and uh uh, no. you are not going to get great results in the long term without it cos you are going to be sick or weak or confused or unable to make decisions or…well…something a lot less than optimal.

what the hell am i talking about?

well–let’s ask popeye or my mom…eat your greens! yep. that’s the thing. the number one most missing in action food in the american diet today. seriously.

i’ll tell you a story. back in des moines iowa a few years back a chef friend of mine used to notice some of the southeast asian immigrant women roaming about the parks and picking bag after bag of what looked to most any native iowan to be weeds. so she asked them about it one day and one of the women held of a fleshy leaf for her to taste.

epiphany!

lemony tart, fresh, crunchy. tasty! and through the language barrier she managed to grasp two things: this was dinner and this was for the farmers market! to be sold! what these women were picking was wild purslane, which grows wild and free just about anywhere the sun shines bright, in a radial pattern ironically, like the spokes of a wheel.

with that lemony crunchy thing it has going on, you can eat is as a salad green or lightly steamed with butter salt and pepper, or cooked up in a soup. forage! which is also the term used for what the tastiest chickens, beeves, lambs, and turkeys eat plenty of for all the warm months–leafy greens. that’s right. chickens eat grass, when they can. and when they do they lay wonderful eggs with beautiful deep yellow/orange yolks, firm eggs that hold together and taste–mmmmm.

in switzerland the chefs are so cognizant of the effect of grass in the diet of the chickens that they have different recipes for eggs produced at different times of the year! april eggs, may eggs, etc.

so anyway

long before they started feeding cattle cornflakes and antibiotics to fatten them up faster and get them to market in record time and in record numbers, all beeves ate grass. pretty much just grass. and in the late spring and early summer you could see it in the golden tint to the cream, the sunset orange of the butter. and the taste…well–you’ll have to check that out for yourself cos today i’m talking about greens–the same stuff the little fish eat, the little fish that get eaten up by the big fish. and did you ever wonder why fish is supposed to be so good for you? what makes that fish oil so important in the human diet? it’s all the greens those little fish eat, that’s why! yes!

green power

so back to you and me and our out of balance wheels and our lists of goals short medium long. the nutrients we need to think clearly, to emote freely, to move with grace–all of these are in our leafy greens. in abundance. vitamins, minerals, chlorophyl–liquid sunshine! and this time of year especially, up here in the north, we need to replenish ourselves after the long dark winter. and way down south? well, you’ve got a long dark winter coming up–make like noah and build yourself an ark of greens!

there’s kale, collards, broccoli, spinach; salads, pot-greens, stews and stir fries. there’s beet greens, arugula, bok choy and cabbage–domestic greens, wild greens, farmers market, backyard. you can cook them alone, mix them up raw; you can serve them with fish or in a vegetable soup. and the most important thing about this bounteous abundance of greens all sorts is that you eat them! today!

to fortify your organism. to give you the energy that begets enthusiasm that begets action that begets the results you are looking for. for the joy of living and going going going. of resting and loving and reading and watching–of everything you do and don’t do with your life–it all goes better with a diet of greens!

i’m inspired by the greens today, i’m eating kale tonight. i’m persevering with the many sights and tastes of the multitude of greens available at your grocer, in your yard, in the little garden patch. fuel your adventures with the number one additive; greens greens greens. and then watch that wheel transform itself. watch those goals move to the finish line. you’re in this for the long haul…make sure you take care of your body and brain to be in tip top shape all the way.

good habits will replace bad habits in the long run–and they’ll make up for them in the short. so ignore your bad habits–and don’t ignore your greens!

to end where we began

okay.that’s just about it. except here at the end i’d like to say that there is no better fuel and ally for new beginnings than the first thing that pops out of the earth when the cold begins to abate–the leafy greens! eat some every day for the rest of your life–if you don’t see a change i’ll be shocked beyond belief, and that’s the last word! (except for the words that you add!)

photo by cheesy42